Dan Koe’s 2-Hour Writer
What I've learned
Mindset Shifts:
Operationalize creativity. breaking creativity down into actions:
walk for between 30 to 60 minutes.
If consuming, then only long-form lectures.
Having something handy, usually your phone, to note down ideas.
Boredom generates creativity. I have found lectures while training at the gym to induce a lot of creativity. It’s like Hormozi’s ‘Between Sets’ - clearest thinking then.
To Research, not consume. Consuming is entertainment. It is a waste of time. Researching meaning, consuming everything around a topic, so it produces insight. You can separate the signal for the noise, and share the 80? that produces 20? of the results. That's your content. This ties into a mindset shift that it has brought on as well:
I am a producer. I look at information and topics I am interested in and think 'How can I make a video about this? How can I help my younger self save the months to weeks I’ve spent gathering this information?'
Dan has quite the notion template - one that is not intuitive to me. It feels like the midwit meme:
Dan has all these systems on notion vs, Hormozi uses Twitter to note down thoughts. He then aggregates and breaks his tweets down on YouTube. Hamza also has simpler 'just share your lessons online' advice. I have a similar, simpler system. I use Standard Notes, or the notes to self feature in signal to jot down my thoughts. I later put that onto this free YouTuber OS template. It has a section for ideas and a section for videos. This is where I am writing this script.
My main complaint with Notion for idea capture is quite slow to open, slow enough for me to lose the idea. It also needs internet to work and I don't have mobile data on my smartphone (it's in my dumb phone). This is why I opt for signal usually - it has the lowest delay from idea to capture. Experiment with that for yourself - your production vs consumption. Reading books vs not, listening to podcasts vs not.
I was also worried about producing content. I had the limiting belief of “I don’t have much to say”. spending time with normal people made me realize that I have a lot of helpful information in my head. If I can research, synthesize, and package high-signal ideas, I won't have to worry about output. Output will exist as long as quality input and boredom do. I would like to highlight this quote from the course:
This is the realization my bois - Siddha, Vivek, and I are coming to. We delay gratification and enjoy the process of delaying gratification. We dated people who did not match what we thought we wanted. I spend my lunch break by the lake and go on dates only to enjoy her company. I am traveling to places I usually wouldn’t go - as dates, experimenting with life.
“Live with an open heart, even if it hurts” - The Way of The Superior Man, David Deida
Dan produces 3 tweets a day - he schedules them. Then, turns high-engagement tweets into a newsletter which he uses as a script for Youtube. I will do the more hormozi style of: I write my thoughts, then expand on some with video. Send the script out as a newsletter. That's the Dan in me.
Outline your newsletter/script one week before you write and release it. Outlining a newsletter is getting your ideas out of your head. This will allow space for new ideas to improve. That could be subtraction for brevity or stories for impact.
Writing the newsletter is connecting those dots, tying those ideas together.
This is also operationalizing creativity.
I had a realization about this between sets as well:
I never wanted to script because it felt inauthentic and boring. From 100 unscripted videos, and now more in-depth videos, I have realized:
Scripting is not inauthenticity by omission.
It is respect by omission.
Pascal once said “If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter”
I save you time, I weed through the bullshit and deliver high-signal information to you.
Dan broke another limiting belief of mine:
in his Productise Yourself lecture:
People don’t pay for information. They pay for speed - flight over train, fast food over healthy food. If I can aggregate and synthesize information, I can charge for it because it saves my customers time. You pay down your ignorance debt fast as fuck.
To hook the audience, you need to give a problem statement, a story, or an idea. hamza does the story well. a problem statement could be: You cannot focus. You think you can, but you don’t even know you can’t focus. An idea is that women show their true selves to low-level men, to borrow one from Nikhil.
The problem with this type of content creation is that the outcome is dopamine, not education. It feels purposeless. But then again, the skill is to educate while making it interesting. It is only purposeless and dishonorable if you make it.
‘You have to make the audience interested in your interest’ - Dan Koe
Tactics:
Add CTAs at the end of medium-form content, and throughout long-form content.
Repurpose tweet screenshots for Instagram and Facebook. Read them out loud for reels/TikTok.
Put thread screenshots on Instagram and turn them into LinkedIn long-form
Lists are low-hanging fruit to build a following.
But what about audience quality - I wouldn’t hang out with '5 ways to make $100 online' viewers?
This depends on the quality of the list or the content of the pointers themselves. 5 ways to make money videos have bullshit information. You can make a list with better information. This very newsletter is a list, an unordered one, but a list nonetheless. This script was first a list of lessons. I connected them using stories and examples and then made them flow as an article (as best as I could).
Capture attention by:
specific numbers - $2573
negativity bias - you will get the girl vs you will never get rejected again.
group call out - if you are a teenager, etc.
problem call out - if you are lonely - Hamza does both together and because of him, I default to both as well eg. if you are a lonely teenager.
Evidence-stripe screenshot
conviction - confidence - ‘This WILL change your life’ vs ‘this might help you’
use active voice - use Hemingway
How to write:
bullet points
line breaks
break sentences - use parenthesis, and use dashes over commas
50 cents per follower per month, when you have a paid product.
I have a tendency to go off on tangents - writing structure helps me avoid that. My structure, inspired by Dan, will be:
story
lessons
actionable steps
Where my advice does not apply. Where you can falsify it.
I will teach from a student mindset because I have seen how rigid the cult leader box can be. Teaching as if the viewer knows nothing is part of this.
Hook the audience with a personal experience, a story, or common advice you will debunk.
’We’ve always been told women will like us if we're nice to them.’
you can hook using a one-liner big idea - 'Focus is the 21st century’s greatest meta-skill'.
'the girl you like will like you more when you’re cocky.'
Context and Credibility:
‘I chased the same girl for 4 years and asked her out at least 4 times. I wasted 25% of my life behind a girl. Now, through self-improvement, My woman refused to go out with her friends to spend more time with me.’
Advice
‘This is how I did that’
Look at other’s content for inspiration. Hamza says you can copy thumbnails and titles, as long as you don’t watch their video. Then you’ll have a high-performing video with your unique take on the topic.